The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 12. First Lesson (4)
The next day.
Contrary to my worries, the makeshift bed I’d constructed from branches and leaves using the know-how I’d gained from my mercenary days in my past life, combined with Iris’s blessing, made sleeping surprisingly comfortable.
Though I couldn’t exactly call it pleasant—merely tolerable.
‘Still, it’s far better than what the other Candidates are experiencing.’
By now, they were probably all exhausted and half-dead from fatigue.
Camping without proper experience had a way of draining your stamina worse than not sleeping at all.
‘Well, that’s probably one of the lesson’s objectives too.’
The types of beasts released were far too vicious to be merely about learning practical tracking techniques.
Feline beasts were renowned for their speed compared to other beasts with the same number of ‘eyes,’ and they left almost no traces behind.
‘They must have anticipated that the Candidates wouldn’t capture all the beasts in a single day.’
Why else would they have warned us to prepare thoroughly, not knowing how many days this would take?
The true purpose of this lesson wasn’t merely tracking the beasts released on the Mountain, but making the Candidates themselves realize how to solve the survival necessities—camping and food procurement.
In other words.
“Mm.”
Waking early like this, watching for any dangerous elements nearby while keeping watch over Iris as she slept peacefully, was itself part of the lesson.
‘Iris.’
Recalling her appearance from last night as she ate ramen with an excited expression, her cute legs kicking back and forth, I became certain of one more thing.
‘Even if all the memories we shared together have vanished, Iris is still Iris.’
It was a simple truth, yet somehow it felt so overwhelming.
‘I want to meet the others soon.’
Yuren, Berald, and Sophia.
I wonder how they’re all doing now?
As I was lost in memories of my old comrades.
“…Why are you smiling like that with such a nasty expression?”
Camilla’s voice came from beside me.
“What? Can’t I smile if I want to?”
“Hmph! That was definitely a scheming smile!”
“Stop spouting nonsense this early and wake up Iris. We need to get moving soon.”
“Ugh.”
Camilla approached Iris and gently shook her shoulder.
“Holy Maiden. It’s time to wake up… Eek!”
“Hmmm… just a little longer…”
Iris, her voice heavy with sleep, pulled Camilla into an embrace.
Clinging to the embraced Camilla, Iris whined childishly, rubbing her cheek against her chest.
“P-please, Holy Maiden. You mustn’t do this!”
“Mmm… what is this? It’s so hard.”
“Get up, you brat.”
Smack.
Camilla struck Iris’s back as she clung to her.
Iris, who had been drowsy with sleep, slowly opened her eyes.
“Have you awakened, Saint?”
“Mmm… I’m up. But my back feels sore for some reason….”
“Well, you slept on dirt with only some leaves scattered beneath you, so it’s only natural your back would ache.”
“Ah, right—we camped out. No wonder something hard and flat kept pressing against my cheek earlier.”
“….”
Endure, Camilla.
She is your liege.
“Let’s set out soon.”
“Set out? Where to?”
“I found traces of a Demonic Beast while exploring the area this morning.”
We had experienced camping as intended by the lesson’s purpose.
It was time to resume tracking the Demonic Beast.
* * *
After a brief wash at the nearby Stream.
Our Party moved methodically, following the traces of the Demonic Beast.
We traveled for several hours like this.
In the distance, I could spot a Demonic Beast drinking water from the Stream, sipping leisurely.
‘Is it the same feline-type Demonic Beast?’
Unlike the first Demonic Beast I had captured, it didn’t possess a beak-like mouth, but its overall appearance was largely similar.
The one difference was that it had four eyes instead of three.
It was a far more formidable specimen than the one I had caught yesterday.
‘Now that I think about it, I recall hearing about this.’
Among the three Demonic Beasts released in the Forest, one was particularly swift and difficult to capture.
The reason it took three days to capture all the Demonic Beasts was precisely because of this Four-Eyed grade creature.
‘Back then, our Party couldn’t even capture a Three-Eyed grade, let alone a Four-Eyed one.’
Standing before a Four-Eyed grade Demonic Beast like this, I felt anew how much had changed since my return.
“…It has one more eye.”
Camilla, having noticed the Demonic Beast possessed four eyes, spoke with a slightly tense voice.
“Should I capture it this time?”
“Hmph, whether it has three eyes or four makes no difference.”
Camilla stepped forward, unwilling to yield.
I shrugged and took position near the escape route, just as yesterday.
“Haaah!”
Patter-patter-patter!
As I gave the signal, Camilla dashed forward with swift precision.
“Grrrowl?!”
The Demonic Beast, focused on drinking, suddenly lifted its head.
It desperately turned its body to flee toward the escape route, but the escape route was already blocked by me.
The Demonic Beast hesitated, glancing back and forth between me and Camilla, before finally lunging toward Camilla.
‘So she’s planning to break through.’
When I glanced back at Camilla Bediche, she had drawn her sword with a contemptuous expression.
“Come on then, if you dare!”
Camilla Bediche raised her blade toward the charging magical beast.
The holy mark etched upon her left chest blazed with light, and a luminous white aura engulfed her sword, burning brilliantly.
Just as she was about to bring the blade down toward the beast’s throat—
Beep beep!
[Warning: Killing a training magical beast instead of capturing it will result in point deduction.]
A red warning window appeared on the Hero Watch fastened to her wrist.
“Ugh…!”
Camilla Bediche hastily twisted her blade’s trajectory.
But it was already impossible to completely halt a sword mid-swing.
Screech!
Her blade barely grazed past the beast’s neck.
“Damn it! You should’ve told me about this beforehand!”
Camilla Bediche erupted in anger, glaring at the red warning window hovering above her Hero Watch.
Perhaps because her attention had been diverted by the warning for a moment.
She failed to notice what she had actually severed.
“Grrrrr…”
The restraining magical artifact that had been fitted around the beast’s neck split in half and fell away.
Four pupils blazed with an eerie crimson light.
“Grraaagh!”
Freed from the magical artifact, the beast bolted past Camilla Bediche at a speed far greater than before.
“What?!”
The startled Camilla Bediche turned her head, but the beast had already passed her.
The direction the freed magical beast was charging toward, its blood-red eyes blazing—
“No, Iris!”
Camilla Bediche cried out urgently, even forgetting the honorific of ‘Holy Maiden.’
“Ugh!”
Iris attempted to dodge the charging beast, but for someone whose specialty was not close combat, evading such a sudden charge was impossible.
As the beast’s savage fangs lunged toward Iris—
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
Berald’s martial technique.
Heaven’s Reversal.
Crash!
“Kyaaah!”
The beast, flipped by its own charging momentum, crashed to the ground with a shriek.
I swung my sheathed sword and struck the thrashing beast’s head.
Thwack!
The beast’s eyes lost their crimson glow as its skull took the blow from the scabbard.
“Are you alright?”
“Ah… yes.”
Iris nodded with a bewildered expression and grasped my hand to pull herself up.
“Ah, Iris!”
Camilla Bediche rushed toward us and approached Iris.
“A-are you hurt anywhere?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Phew.”
Camilla Bediche exhaled a relieved sigh, her lips trembling as she bowed at a ninety-degree angle.
“I sincerely apologize, Holy Maiden! I will report this matter to the Holy Kingdom at once and ensure proper punishment—”
“No. There’s no need for that.”
“B-but!”
“It’s fine, I’m telling you.”
Iris smiled faintly and grasped Camilla Bediche’s shoulders, straightening her bent form.
“I didn’t know that killing magical beasts was forbidden either.”
“….”
Camilla Bediche, her expression gloomy as she gnawed at her lip, turned her body toward me.
“…Thank you. I will repay this debt without fail.”
“Hmm. Repay, you say? How specifically?”
“I’ll do anything within my power.”
“Oh really? Anything at all?”
“Anything except eating feces!”
“No.”
What does this woman take me for?
“Well, forget the repayment. Let’s call it even.”
“Call it even?”
“That time last week when I sent you flying.”
“Ugh. Th-that was—!”
Leaving Camilla Bediche in her flustered state as she began her excuses about being caught off-guard, I approached the restraining magical artifact split cleanly in two and scattered across the ground.
“Will it still register in this state?”
I tilted my head curiously and held the Hero Watch up to it. A clear chiming sound rang out as a holographic window materialized.
[The capture of the Party ‘Iris, Camilla Bediche, Dale Han’ has been confirmed.]
[With all magical beasts captured, the ‘Practical Combat Lesson’ comes to an end.]
[Candidates are to move swiftly to the Training Ground entrance.]
“Looks like another Party caught the last one.”
I clicked my tongue while gazing at the holographic window floating in the air.
Had I been more diligent and forgone the camping trip with Iris yesterday, I could have captured all three beasts, but that was water under the bridge now.
“Let’s head back.”
“Understood.”
Camilla Bediche nodded and followed behind me.
And so the two of us made our way toward the Training Ground.
‘Hm?’
Two?
“Iris?”
“Oh, I apologize. I was just lost in thought for a moment.”
“Y-you must still be hurt from earlier…!”
“That’s not it.”
“What do you mean it’s not! Your face is all flushed!”
“I-it’s really not like that!”
Iris lowered her head as if to hide her cheeks, quickening her pace with urgency.
“Oh! Your Holiness!”
Camilla Bediche rushed after her.
“…What was that about?”
I tilted my head in confusion, watching Iris’s retreating figure grow distant.
Why was that?
For just a brief moment, the look in Iris’s eyes resembled how she had gazed at me in my past life when we were lovers.
‘Stop dwelling on pointless thoughts and move on.’
I swept away the idle musings swirling in my mind and followed the two women.
* * *
The reason I had proposed forming a Party was born purely from curiosity.
-I’m truly… relieved.
Why had he
wept so sorrowfully before me, someone he had never exchanged a single word with?
The displeasure that had filled me initially faded with time.
When curiosity emerged from beneath those settling emotions, my mind became consumed entirely by that man who had looked at me that day and spoken the word “relieved.”
‘What could possibly be relieving about it?’
I pursued question after question, yet answers remained elusive.
Instead, as my thoughts lingered on him, an entirely unexpected notion surfaced.
‘Something feels familiar.’
Even knowing that we had never exchanged words until now,
the gleam in his eyes as he gazed upon me,
the tone of his voice directed toward me—
they felt strangely intimate.
No.
Did they merely feel intimate?
My heart raced with a joy I could not suppress.
‘Why am I like this?’
It was as though I had reunited with a lost lover from a past life.
When even such an absurd fantasy crossed my mind,
-For this lesson, we’ll form Parties of three. Each of you is free to gather your own members.
The moment those words reached my ears.
I found myself rising from my seat without thinking, moving toward him.
‘Looking back now, it’s rather amusing.’
I realized I’d acted far too impulsively for someone befitting a saint.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
It had been merely a single day, but the time spent with him… wasn’t so bad at all.
No.
To be honest.
-Are you alright?
I was happy.
Far more than I’d ever imagined.
When we tracked the demonic beasts through the forest path together.
When I tasted ramen for the very first time.
When he shielded me from the ferocious demonic beast lunging at me.
When he extended his hand toward me as I fell, asking if I was alright.
A tingling current coursed through my body, and I felt an emotion I’d never experienced before in my entire life.
An emotion I absolutely should not harbor.
As a ‘saint’.
“Sigh. What am I going to do going forward….”
As I continued my internal struggle, exhaling deeply.
Fragments of memory suddenly flickered through my mind.
-Hey, why are you speaking informally to me? Do you even know who I am?
-Fine, we’re the same year so I’ll let the informal speech slide. But what about yesterday? Huh? Why did you lay hands on my friend without permission, you—
-Oh, right. You absolutely must forget everything that happened today, okay? Otherwise… you’re dead.
-Kyaaah! What is this?! It’s insanely delicious! Are you serious?!
“What the—”
What am I really going to do?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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